Their study, published in 2010, posits that a person’s preference for a given color can be determined by averaging out how much that person likes all of the objects they associate with that color. Your inclination for orange, for example, depends on how you feel about pumpkins and traffic cones and Cheetos, among other things; for green, it varies according to your thoughts on grass and American dollar bills and broccoli.

“It turns out, if you look at all of the things that are associated with blue, they’re mostly positive,”